"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - John F. Kennedy
A Greek Tragedy
What is happening in Greece has happened over many years in poor African countries, why should be we be surprised that Greek hospitals are running out of medicines, that Greek pensioners pay more than half of their meager pension back as ‘austerity tax’? Why should the world be surprised at any of this when we already know that debt repayment was allowed to completely destroy fragile health services and education systems in countless developing countries across the world. Greece is being forced into poverty unknown in modern Europe by the austerity restrictions demanded by IMF and the EU. None of us can afford to sit back smugly and think it couldn’t happen here, because it could, the next European economy to collapse could be Portugal or Spain or even Ireland, none of us are safe. And if our economy completely collapses do you think the elite bunch of millionaires running this country are going to suffer…………..I think not.
. One in five adults and one in two young people in Greece are unemployed. Homelessness, which was hardly known in Athens before the crisis, has become widespread. Tens of thousands of small businesses have gone bankrupt due to drastic tax increases.
The wealthy Greek elite are hardly affected by the austerity measures. According to Handelsblatt, they have deposited €560 billion in foreign accounts, a sum nearly twice as large as Greece's entire national debt.
the IMF are demanding budget cuts of €3.3 billion for this year alone—and all at the expense of the working class.
Health spending is to be cut by €1.1 billion,
15,000 state employees will be sacked in the coming year,
150,000 are to be made redundant over the next four years.
The federal minimum wage, upon which 300,000 people depend, is to be reduced from €750 to €600,
unemployment benefits reduced from €460 to €360 a month.
Supplementary pensions, which many Greeks depend upon for their survival, will be cut by 15 percent.
Private sector wages are to be reduced by 20 percent
"Because the lowered minimum wage will provide the base line for future wage negotiations, wage cuts are expected to be major," said James Nixon of the Société Générale bank.
The more I trawled YouTube looking for videos and the more I trawled the net looking for other peoples opinions, the more I found ordinary people waking up to the fact that democracy is dead and the rich and powerful rule the world.
There is no democracy any more, the rich and powerful make all the decisions, control the wealth and don’t give a dam about the rest of us. We all need to wake up.
I happened to visit another page here and found a whole lot of links and videos relating to the Greek situation, thanks Tracey for allowing me to re-post
http://stillwandering.multiply.com/journal/item/2379/Greeks_R_Us
This guy is also worth a visit.
Cynical
http://youpayyourcrisis.blogspot.com/2012/02/greece-default-or-devastation.html
http://youpayyourcrisis.blogspot.com/2012/02/appeal-for-solidarity-with-people-of.html?showComment=1329562166218#comment-c5846775331975053560
I have not been fully aware of the situation in Greece beyond what is shown on our news. They show a 15 second clip of people rioting and then go back to something else with little explanation except to project how "Greece" might affect the American stock market. So thank you for this and for the links and videos.
ReplyDeleteThe first link does not work, the second one does.
ReplyDeleteI'm having trouble with the videos. The situation in Greece is widely covered here.
ReplyDeletehttp://stillwandering.multiply.com/journal/item/2379/Greeks_R_Us
ReplyDeletetry that one ... Tracey has lots of very good info and links on there
As you say Lotetta, this may be just the beginning. If Greece could return to the drachma then they could devalue, times would still be hard but at least they'd have a chance. Locked into the euro things may well just get worse.
ReplyDeleteThankd Jan, I don't know what went wrong with my link but I meant to link into her page.
ReplyDeleteI tend to agree, its not that I'm against the EU in principle but I hate what it has become. Instead of helping Greece we are forcing the ordinary Greek people into real poverty. The austerity measures demanded cut into the Greek health care system, pensions and just about every thing else. The Greeks can't survive these 'cuts' and its wicked of the EU to demand them. Let Greece default on its debts, return to its own currency and govern its own country.
ReplyDeletesorry bout that, think I've fixed it
ReplyDeleteI think there are others better informed than I; I will trust Frank that the situation has been covered in the US news. I can only say that what I have seen has been unsympathetic to the Greek people and tends to focus on the effects on the US financial situation. I have seen rather little on root causes and what I do see has a faint tinge of disdain for centralization and an implication that the debtor nations are the causes of their own problems.
ReplyDeleteWho ever is to blame, its not the ordinary working people of Greece, this is a quote from one of the links,
ReplyDelete''For months, the lie has been peddled that Greeks are lazy, spendthrift, and have brought the crisis on themselves. This is xenophobic garbage. Greeks work the longest hours in Europe – half as much again, every year, as the Germans. They retire, on average, later than Germans. The Greek government spends less than the EU average, as a share of GDP.''
And...............I'm afraid my opinion is that even if it were the fault of the ordinary Greek people ( which it isn't) they still have the right to a basic level of health care, pensions etc and they are being driven way, way beneath that basic level. The austerity measures imposed on these people from the money lenders of Europe will push them into poverty levels unknown in Europe, and that's unacceptable in a civilised world
the sad thing is ~ we have been here before and should know better
ReplyDeleteIt's sometimes hard to believe this can be happening to a modern European country in the 21st Century. What isn't surprising is that it's the 'ordinary working man' (or maybe it would be more appropriate to say unemployed man now?) having to shoulder the worst of the cutbacks.
ReplyDeletethey are are shouldering ALL of the cutbacks, these 'cutbacks' are imposed with no care as to their consequences, so long as some faceless bureaucrat somewhere manages to balance the books no one cares about the people. Its a scandal that ANYONE should see health care cut, pensions cut, basic unemployment benefit cut, minimum wage cut, but to deliberately imposes this on a country whose workers already live on the breadline is criminal. This is what the EU has come to, the institutions of the EU now line up with the IMF and other world financial institutions who care only about money and not about people.
ReplyDeleteThere is the same amount of money today as there was in 2007. The same number of arable acres, same number of sheep, fish, and so forth. The distribution is different. That is the crime.
ReplyDeletePeople in the US who have small amounts in the Market feel that they will have less money if Greece "defaults" although they haven't the faintest idea of what that means. There is a situation of an artificial scarcity. It is as if, at a child's party, an adult announces loudly "We haven't enough cake!" Then all the children will clamour for cake, pushing and shoving each other. But we have enough cake. It's just that we have allowed one or two privileged children to squirrel away a huge piece and then make our announcement.
I made this point to my congressman, even saying that I would be willing to pay more taxes if the wealthy would as well. He said the weallthy created jobs and invited me to send extra money to the US treasury. I invited him to perform a vulgar act.
thanks Bennett................you put it so well, the problem is indeed one of distribution not supply. We in Europe are all told the same thing, if Greece 'defaults' it will be us who suffer...............like I said, 'divide and rule', it works every time.
ReplyDelete